Cupid's Granddaughter

13 - Graceful Laundry

“I told you to do laundry! You have a washer and dryer in your apartment! The only thing I made you do was laundry,” I scolded. I sighed and glanced at the mess wondering what I should do about it.

“Sorry,” Nate muttered quietly.

“Not yet,” I promised before walking out of the room and into the kitchen. Nate followed me curious as to what I had meant. I pulled out some trash bags from underneath his sink and threw them at him.

“You want me to throw it all away?”

“No.” I led him back into his bedroom. “You are going to stuff all your clothes into these bags and we will travel to a wonderful place called the Laundromat.”

“Are you going to help me put these clothes into bags?” He wondered as he began. I shuffled through the clothes and sat on his bed.

“They aren’t my clothes and I’m not touching gross boxers or briefs or whatever,” I replied lying down. Nate grumbled something but I didn’t hear it. I was sure it was just a profanity anyway. It took him about ten minutes before he had a visible floor again and three trash bags full of dirty clothes.

“Wow,” I commented. “I don’t even think I have that many clothes.”

Nate shrugged. “I have to keep up with the style.”

I grabbed the lightest bag and threw it over my shoulder ‘Santa Claus’ style. Nate grabbed the other two and we got ready to leave. Lugging three large bags full of clothes through an apartment building was simply not fun. Shoving them into the trunk of a cab wasn’t much better.

Once we arrived at the local Laundromat, Nate paid the driver since he did have bills on him and we both worked on lugging the bags into the public place.

Luckily it was empty so we had all the washers and dryers to ourselves.  I told Nate to open the bags and sort them by color. There were a few open in case other people came by. I bought some detergent from the little vending machine type thing and put soap in all nine of the machines we took up.

We put all the necessary quarters into the washers and waited. I sat on top of one and felt the vibrations go through me. It was better than standing, I figured. Nate came and leaned on the washer next to the one I was sitting upon. I was pleased to see that I was taller than him this way.

“What now?”

I shrugged. “We wait.”

“It’s going to take hours,” he complained.

“Deal,” I muttered. “It’s all your clothes.”

Nate sighed and began humming an unfamiliar tune. After a while of listening to that and the clank of metal vibrating against the ground, I grew bored.

“Are we going to talk about last night?” Nate asked suddenly. I hadn’t expected that to come up again. It took me a few moments to reply.

“No.”

“Never?”

“Never,” I confirmed. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Peyton,” Nate began gently. He moved from beside me to in front of me and since I was taller than him sitting on the washer, I had to look down at him. “You have a lot of problems that need to be expressed.”

I rolled my eyes. I didn’t need this crap from him. “It was one moment of weakness. I’m still me and I’m not just going to break down and cry again okay? I’m fine and I don’t need any therapy bullshit.”

Nate seemed slightly taken aback by my attitude. “Well, I’m here if you ever need to talk.”

I leaned down a little and looked at him with a fake smile. “Stay out of my personal life.”